I spoke to members of the Braves 400 Fan Club last week along with Fred Owens of Tomahawk Take. Our audience was diehard Braves supporters and, judging by their (good) questions, they have a lot of angst about the direction of the team.
I understand. There was no way Braves boss John Hart was going to rebuild the team without hearing some howls of protest from his customers. The Braves have aimed for the postseason for a long time now and any digression from that path is hard for fans to take when they want pennants. Add in the team's pending move from Fulton to Cobb, and it was inevitable there would be backlash against blowing up the roster.
That's why I was struck by the contrast between the view of some angry fans and Braves Hal of Famer Chipper Jones. Before Braves alumni softball game on Saturday, he was asked if he'd talked to Hart in the wake of all of those trades.
“Nothing more than to say, ‘Hey, I think you are doing a good job,” Jones said. “I’ve got to give him a lot of credit. It’s hard to come into a new organization and just rip it up from top to bottom. But I agree with him that was probably what needed to happen.
“There is no sense in teetering on the fence: Do we rebuild, do we keep the team together? He chose to rebuild and he ripped it up from top to bottom. That’s the way to go.”
Here’s a guy who is more emotionally invested in the Braves than any fan and he’s still able to take the long view about their plan. Anyone who follows Jones on Twitter knows he’s not shy about expressing controversial opinions, so you can safely assume he’s not self-editing his answers.
You can tell Jones doesn’t like seeing the Braves struggle this season but he’s willing to take that bad medicine now for an eventual cure.
“It’s a little weird for this organization,” Jones said. “We came out of spring training so many years with a chance to make the postseason. That’s probably not going to happen this year and it might not happen next year, either. But I can assure you for sustained success going forward, once we get into a new stadium, this organization is in a pretty good spot to be competitive for a while.”
Obviously Jones can’t guarantee Hart’s plan will work. No one can do that. Hart still is many moves away from the endgame, and a lot still has to go right.
Most importantly, the Braves have to pick the right prospects and then their player development program has to nurture them into major leaguers. Hart’s plan is to eventually flip some of his many pitching prospects for bats down the line but he has to get those deals right, too.
I’ve heard Braves ripping Hart for these trades but that’s silly because the moves weren’t supposed to make the team better in the short-term. Any blanket condemnation of the moves are emotional hot takes rather than analytical evaluations of reality. Can't we wait to see what happens first?
Certainly Hart can be fairly criticized for how he initially sold his plan. Hart was on the right track when he said in December: "It's not like I'm breaking up the '27 Yankees." Hart should have kept hammering on that theme—the Braves were more than just a tweak or two away from contending--but he instead insisted he was retooling instead of rebuilding. Hart also made a major misfire when he said he wouldn't trade Craig Kimbrel and then ended up doing so.
But that’s all just PR and perception. The reality is the Braves needed to restock their minor-league system and there was no way to do that without first gutting some of the major-league roster. We have to wait and see if all of these moves lead to the Braves being competitive in 2016 and a contender in 2017.
Patience is not something Braves fans are accustomed to, and I’m never one to say customers are wrong for not liking a product. If they decide the Braves as presently constructed aren’t worth their time and money, that’s reasonable.
But if Chipper can be patient then surely some Braves backers can do it, too.
